Religious distinction: before the lights go out

Last Sunday, Muslim protesters, many of them quite young, marched through Lagos streets campaigning for the right to wear hijab in public schools. The protest drew significant attention. But the state government continues to resist any attempt to create what it describes as distinctions in public primary and secondary schools. Tertiary institutions in the state and elsewhere do not bar distinctive dresses. Last week too, some students in Baptist High School, Iwo in Osun State took their campaign for dress distinction to a new height, perhaps flowing from the unresolved disagreement over the state’s controversial reclassification of schools. Christian and Muslim students not only wore distinctive dresses showcasing their religions, they insisted on conducting morning assemblies along distinct religious lines. A report suggested that even traditional religion worshippers in the same school wore dresses indicating their faith.

Religious differences mixed unhealthily with deep socio-economic cleavages have turned the north-eastern part of the country into a difficult place to live and work. The trauma is spreading steadily but insidiously into the Southwest, a zone hitherto recognised as an oasis of religious, ethnic and class tolerance. Indeed, many Christian groups have begun to question what they believe is the dominance of the Muslim political elite in the zone’s governmental affairs. They have, for instance, started to campaign for the election of a Christian governor in Lagos State, arguing that with the exception of the brief governorship of Michael Otedola, no Christian had been governor of the state since the Second Republic. The campaign is of course a psychological one, for no Lagos governor has been accused of sectarian bias in any form.

If sectarian differences are heightening in the Southwest, it is perhaps because the zone’s leaders have been unable to anticipate the problem and unsure how to handle the delicate issue. Lagos has been a little more assertive in sustaining the status quo, insisting that students in public schools wear the same uniform for the simple reason that public schools remain exactly that – public schools. Students in private schools are at liberty to wear regulation dresses and uniforms as their proprietors deem fit. It is, however, not clear how much longer Lagos can hold out, for the campaigns are unlikely to ease off without a major counter-campaign by the zone’s elite. The campaign to wear uniforms indicating one’s religious persuasion is gradually spreading in the zone. Indeed, Osun State is currently at the vortex of the crisis, having attracted controversy by making one concession after another to religious activists. Concessions, as everyone knows, beget even more concessions.

Going by the deeply disturbing sectarian killings, Boko Haram insurgency and other socio-economic revolts shaking the northern part of the country to its foundations, it is difficult to explain why the Southwest has refused to be proactive. When former Zamfara State governor, Sani Ahmed (Yerima), embraced religious distinction through what former President Olusegun Obasanjo called political sharia, I warned that the lights might be going out over Northern Nigeria. After mourning the collapse of secularism in the North where I grew up and schooled, I indicated that the region was beginning to spawn a brood of vipers with fatal consequences for both the elite and the underclass. I thought at the time that those consequences would be limited to perhaps some isolated cases of violence and terror attacks against secular or Christian targets. I never imagined we would experience the systematic conflagration triggered by the Boko Haram Islamic sect, nor did I even imagine that young, sometimes well-heeled individuals would embrace suicide missions.

The consequence of the carelessness of the northern elite, who rode on the back of religion to power or tried to use religion as their footstool, is that many parts of the North have become ‘Lebanonised’ and ‘Pakistanised’. Nigeria struggled against periodic outbreaks of Maitatsine revolts in the 1980s; now they are grappling with consistent sectarian insurgency, complete with genocidal tendencies and ethnic cleansing. I do not have the impression that the North has learnt the right lessons of how to leave religion quite out of politics and out of social life, and I really think the problem will get much worse than it already is before the society wakes up to the sinister consequences of mixing governance with religion.

I therefore expected the self-acclaimed enlightened Southwest to comprehensively understand the acute dangers of trifling with religion. They know the harmful effects sectarian controversies and violent disagreements have on development, yet they have puzzlingly decided to meddle with it, pretending they could tap its potentials and leash the genie. But we have the history of the Maghreb to learn from. In fact, the stalling of the Syrian revolt against Bashir Al-Assad’s rule, particularly the cold feet developed by the West in intervening in that country, is not unconnected with the complications introduced into the revolt by high-level sectarian overtone. Al-Assad has paradoxically turned out to be the defender of secularism, and his opponents are either affiliated to al-Qaeda or have developed their own peculiar hot brand of adulterated theocracy.

While Tunisia was struggling to retain some secularist flavour and Libya was trying to discover the identity it prefers for this modern era, Egypt under Mohammed Morsi plunged unadvisedly into non-secularist governance. The Egyptian military, still bathing under the hue of Nasserism, has constituted itself into a bastion of mild secularism. This was why it moved against Morsi’s government, rewrote the constitution by deleting expressly theocratic provisions, and seems bent now on installing one of its own in power both to pursue the peace that has eluded the country for months and to protect the country’s secularist principles. Turkey, until recently, also had a military that served as the protector of the country’s secularism, inspired by the iconic Ataturk who brilliantly and foresightedly drew a line between state and religion, including banning the hijab in schools and offices.

After the debacle in the North, from which the rest of Nigeria ought to draw lessons, it is sad that Southwest governors and political leaders have taken for granted the long-standing and enviable secularism of their zone. The cultural sinews that nourished and recommended the zone’s secularist tendency have today proved too fragile to keep the secularist principles instituted by the zone’s founding fathers. As a region and empire, the zone drew firm lines between its legislative, religious and executive components. The lines have been obfuscated not simply because of the march of time and civilisation, but because of the carelessness and meddlesomeness of the zones’ leaders. We cannot pretend that religious differences do not exist, but we can and should firmly and unrepentantly set boundaries for them. The heightening controversies and differences among the zone’s religious persuasions, which are already hardening into sectarian distinctions and enclaves, will not resolve themselves. The zone’s leaders must act now if the oasis of religious peace and interconnectedness that the zone has been for centuries is not to become a dangerous and seething mirage.

As the sharp differences in the Osun school shows, when the problem starts, no one is immune. If Osun does not carefully handle the controversy and treat the disease from its roots, it is a matter of time before violence becomes a part of the crisis. The time to act is now. And like Osun, it is hard to know what intentions lurk in the minds of parents in Lagos promoting religious distinctions in the minds of impressionable youths. This is dangerous and short-sighted. We all have a duty to promote togetherness among our young ones, no matter their religious persuasion. If the zone’s culture, civilisation and humanity are no longer strong enough to bind the people of the zone together, then it is headed for even much more trouble than the North is experiencing.

A few months ago, using Osun as the springboard for my analysis, I pointed out that political leaders in the Southwest needed to do something concrete about the incipient religious disharmony in the zone. The warning is still apposite today; for obviously the problem will not go away on its own. Instead, it will probably worsen if nothing is done beyond just appealing to religious leaders to maintain peace, and opinion leaders to refrain from stoking the embers of discord. Those sort of appeals profited the North nothing, apparently. They are not likely to profit anyone in the Southwest in any way. Governors and governments of the zone have an urgent need to stay away from religion almost totally if the zone is not to descend into a maelstrom of sectarian violence. Already the lights of peace and civilisation are flickering over Nigeria, the Southwest not excluded; we must not let them be extinguished altogether.

One thought on “Religious distinction: before the lights go out”

Sir, help press it on Aregbesola, Osun State governor to stay off combining religion with governance, he is indirectly arousing religious conciousness among youths by his actions. The Iwo incidence is unfortunate, despite the town being reknown for large population of Muslims, Baptists movement still flourish there leading to siting of Bowen University in Iwo. Such tolerance should be preserved.